Accomplished documentarian Maro Chermayeff–who is repped for commercials by Workhorse Media–is debuting Circus, a six part documentary series on PBS this week. Circus was created and directed by Chermayeff and Jeff Dupre.
This is not your grandma’s circus. Then again, in another sense, it is. The documentary series, which premieres on November 3, follows a season with the Big Apple Circus, a traditional European style one-ring circus (in contrast to three-ring). It’s the only one that features “Grandma” the clown played by 58 year old New Jerseyite Barry Lubin. Chermayeff is a practitioner of cinema verite or direct cinema. She goes deep into the subculture–the people with “sawdust in their blood”–from the back lot to the big top, moving from town to town, pitching tents, rehearsing and performing.
“We’re not looking for the craziest most insane thing we can do,” said Chermayeff, “but we find it anyway. It’s called real life and real people, and in the most normal of circumstances, the spectacular is revealed. All of our series are about characters and stories, and about finding people and capturing a world view that we otherwise wouldn’t have an opportunity to become part of. Everyone has had that fantasy about running away and joining the circus. This hasn’t changed in 40 years. This series, in a sense, is about the world of our past imaginings.”
Chermayeff and Dupre went to work on the Circus series, which was initially proposed by John Wilson, head of programming at PBS. “It’s not a children’s show, it’s about the life of the circus and what it takes to make it in that world,” said Chermayeff. “We wanted to make an adult show about true life and real people.”
In fact Chermayeff believes the circus has always been a metaphor for survival. “In the circus, if someone does a triple somersault, they are really doing a triple somersault. They are working their whole life on a continual basis to make that triple somersault every night in every show. There’s a true element of danger and risk.”
The recession even makes an appearance in this series. The market crashed while she was shooting and that underscored the precariousness of earning a living under the big top. The series, like most of Chermayeff’s work, does not have a narrator. In true verite tradition, the stories are experiential or told in the voice of the subjects themselves. The idea is to get a sense of the circus from the circus members’ perspective.
“In their mind, the circus is glorious. When you stand in the middle of the ring, you are surrounded by 2000 people. It’s absolutely mesmerizing. It’s the circus that’s in their mind. It’s the circus behind the circus.”
Chermayeff captured this visceral feel with a high speed Phantom HD camera, the type of expensive equipment routinely used on big budget feature films. Circus was shot at hundreds of frames per second, which helped push the film look into a “hyper-reality.” The production also used Varicams, handicams and HD helmet cams for the trapeze artists. “You can actually see what it feels like when a body is coming at you and you have to catch that body and hurl that body.”
Chermayeff’s credits include other notable series for PBS. She directed all 10 episodes of Carrier, which chronicles life aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz. Mitchell Block, president of Carrier Project, Inc., conceived Carrier and co-created and executive produced the series with Chermayeff, and Bruce Davies, Mel Gibson and Nancy Cotton at Icon Productions. Carrier Project, Inc., produced the series with Icon Productions. The program, which premiered on PBS in ’08, was honored with a Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Cinematography/Reality Programming.
Chermayeff additionally served as one of the producer/directors of the PBS series Frontier House, in which three modern families homesteaded in the American West circa 1883.
She has collaborated closely with noted journalist and interviewer Charlie Rose, having produced and edited many of his one-hour specials. Chermayeff also was director of documentary programming at A&E for two years, and was nominated for an Emmy for her work on the series Biography. In addition to PBS and A&E, her work has appeared on HBO, TLC, Bravo, Discovery, Channel 4 in the UK and France 2.
Chermayeff currently has two films in the works with HBO’s documentary division. She’s directing Mann v. Ford, an investigative piece about a toxic waste lawsuit brought by a New Jersey Indian tribe against Ford Motor Company (“my Erin Brokovich film”), and she’s one of the creators and producers of a profile of the performance artist Marina Abramovich, who spent three months sitting in a chair in the Guggenheim Museum. Despite how it sounds, according to Ms. Chermayeff, the film is not like watching paint dry.
“She sat still and motionless for three and half months. It was physically and emotionally and every way excruciating. Marina is beyond charismatic.”
Chermayeff, who also is a founder and chairman of the MFA Program in Social Documentary at The School of Visual Arts in New York City and a former faculty member of New York University’s Graduate School of Film and Television, has worked on branded content. She spent her formative years working on feature promotion at The Kanew Company, R/Greenberg Associates and Balsmeyer & Everett, where she cut trailers and helped produce movie ads.
“Overnight Success” Has Been More Than A Decade In The Making For Meghann Fahy and Eve Hewson
Meghann Fahy and Eve Hewson, two of the stars of Netflix's whodunit "The Perfect Couple," have news for you if you want to call them breakouts: They've been working in this business for more than a decade.
Fahy made her TV debut in 2009 in an episode of "Gossip Girl." Hewson's first big film role was in 2011's "This Must Be the Place." They do concede, however, that it's recent TV roles โ "The White Lotus" for Fahy and "Bad Sisters" for Hewson โ that have led to new frontiers of opportunity.
Susanne Bier, who directed "The Perfect Couple," says both Fahy and Hewson are "going to be big stars."
"They certainly have proper, profound star quality, Both of them in very different ways," Bier says. "Both are incredibly creative, incredibly smart, and also have a impressive insight as to who they are. You can be a great actor or actress and not necessarily really know who you are yourself. And they do."
Hewson, 33, whose dad is U2 front man Bono, may have grown up in a famous family but she's now in demand in her own right. She will next be seen in a second season of "Bad Sisters, " out in November. She's in Noah Baumbach's next film, alongside Adam Sandler, George Clooney and Riley Keough. She's also been cast in Steven Spielberg's next production and is set to star opposite Murray Bartlett in a racing series for Hulu.
Fahy, 34, is in production on a limited series with Julianne Moore and Milly Alcock called "Sirens," written by Molly Smith Metzler ("Maid") for Netflix. She also has two films in the can with Josh O'Connor ("The Crown," "Challengers") and Brandon Sklenar ("It Ends With Us").
The two actors spoke candidly about this phase of their careers. This interview has been condensed for clarity and... Read More